Posted: Fri 06 May 2011, 15:28 Post subject:
How to partition new HD for XP and Puppy?

I have a 120GB hard drive that I would like to partition for:

- frugal install of Puppy 4.3.0 retro
- XP (yes, I know, but I need it for some things)
- data to be shared between Puppy and XP

The drive was bare; I ran fdisk (dos command) and format /s (also dos) so it is basically accessable by Windows. It currently has two partitions: 112 GB boot and 7GB unallocated. I know I can change these to whatever I need thru gparted.

My questions are:
- how many partitions do I need
- how big should they be
- what formats to choose

I am currently running Puppy 4.3.0 retro from live CD on a Thinkpad 600X Pentium III with 450 MB memory.

Sara, you having 450MB memory there is no real need to use full install unless you are very fond of full install and want to learn how such works using puppy or something. Frugal install on the WinXP partition will do just fine and will allow you to test other puppies within a few minutes even doing manually and without any problem and you get more people here in the forum that would know how to do things while if you ask about full install fewer are active daily to answer questions. At least that is my experience here since a year or so.

But it could be good to have a partition for test of other linux distros to compare puppy with. So many here can advice on that but 450MB RAM is enough to work with puppy in frugal install._________________I use Google Search on Puppy Forum
not an ideal solution though

My daughters complained that their Windows XP partitions were adversely affected by a frugal install of Puppy. It may be just because the XP (NTFS) partitions weren't defragged first or some such thing that I never have to think about with Linux partitions, but I would hesitate to put Puppy files on an NTFS partition. I have an XP laptop on which I boot Puppy from a CD and save to a flash drive; this would probably give satisfactory performance if you didn't have a Linux hard-drive partition, but the Linux HD partition would be best (that's what I use on my desktop computer, which has never had Windows on it)._________________It's stupid to use inferior software for ideological reasons.
--Linus Torvalds

I will not see this anti ntfs claptrap appear here on the Puppy forum like it does on the Knoppix forum.

Many of us use Puppy files for a frugal install on an ntfs partition. They are nothing special they are just files. I use Windows to create them from the iso. The save file could potentially be a problem as it is created with Puppy but I have never had a problem with it. Once it is created then no further problem is likely. Internally it is an ext/ext3 format so Puppy can do what it likes to it internally and it just appears as a file to ntfs.

Some people in Knoppix land seem concerned about writing to ntfs from Linux. My experience is that the risk of Puppy messing up NTFS is less than the risk of Windows messing up NTFS - which nobody seems to mention, despite the fact it happens.

pa_mcclamrock - are your daughters experts on diagnosing faults? How were the Windows XP partitions adversely affected? What is the evidence for Puppy being the cause?

If you are coming from Windows and want to add Linux and you are a newbie then I think, after using a CD and flash for the pupsave, the next safest option is a frugal on the ntfs partition. Newbies DO run into problems creating Linux partitions on Windows. They also run into problems creating a bootloader than installs on the MBR. You are probably a Linux expert and can sort yourself out. Newbies are not and take a very bad impression of Linux if they mess up their Windows install because of creating partitions or mangling the MBR.

To get back to the original question.

To share data between Linux and Windows you COULD use just one big NTFS partition. As Windows cannot see a Linux partition without additional software, creating Linux partitions will not solve this. If you fear the writing of data to ntfs from Linux then create a FAT32 partition of a size as big as you need for the common data. Both Windows and Puppy can see and write to an FAT32 partition.

Then do a Lin'N'Win install of Puppy to the NTFS partition or use noryb's Windows Puppy installer.

Two of my daughters reported that XP wouldn't boot properly, on two different computers, promptly after Puppy main and save files were installed.

Quote:

What is the evidence for Puppy being the cause?

That's it. Post hoc ergo propter hoc doesn't actually prove anything, but it does impress my daughters unfavorably enough that they don't want to see any more Puppy files on their NTFS partitions--and it does suggest that, under some circumstances, there may be a cause-and-effect relationship between installation of Puppy files on NTFS partitions and subsequent misbehavior of Windows. If this is "anti-NTFS claptrap," so be it. I prefer to save to a VFAT partition on a flash drive, when using Puppy on the XP laptop, rather than take a chance of finding out the hard way that the "claptrap" isn't claptrap after all._________________It's stupid to use inferior software for ideological reasons.
--Linus Torvalds

In Puppy's early days, it was considered unsafe to mount an NTFS
partition read/write.

At that time, it was unsafe because the ntfs drivers were not well
developed.

In order to run Puppy on an NTFS partition, we mounted it read only.

Even the frugal install was a manual procedure, to the extent of
downloading a compressed pupsave file and decompressing it from
within Windows.

Things have greatly improved since then. But as recently as my
using Puppy 4.00, I read where ntfs-3g had a corruption bug of some
sort. I didn't worry about it, because I didn't have NTFS partitions
at that time.

Today's ntfs-3g seems to work well and has a lot of user confidence.

Getting full NTFS Journal support and recovery still seems to be a
work in progress. But even that is reportedly improved greatly
recently.

I fill in my own fstab file. I noticed after a bad shutdown, ntfs-3g
wouldn't mount the partition.

What to do? Force the mount? Boot Windows and have chkdisk fix it?

My idea was the best thing to do was boot Windows and let it recover
the journal, and make whatever repairs it wanted to do.

I do regular filesystem checks because I don't want to be working on
partitions which need some repair or clean up.

File system checks are somewhat recent with Puppy. Maybe it isn't even
a default, I have the pfix=fsck set, this way I get file system
checks each boot.

There is no argument that Puppy uses the force option if it wouldn't
mount without it. Usually, I suppose because Windows marked it for a
chkdisk and ntfs-3g won't mount it unless specifically told to do it.

If this doesn't work:

Code:

ntfs-3g $MNT_DEV $MNT_DIR -o umask=0,no_def_opts,noatime,rw

Then Puppy adds the force option:

Code:

ntfs-3g $MNT_DEV $MNT_DIR -umask=0,no_def_opts,noatime,rw,force

I would rather Puppy notify the user of the condition before the
force mount and give her an option to boot Windows and clean it up
first.

Great, so I get pay an attorney 500 dollars to understand what you are
talking about. Cut me some slack and split the expenses, will you?

Just kidding. In the "Information Age", I was able to find out what it
means within a minute.

Post hoc ergo propter hoc, Latin for "after this, therefore because of
this," is a logical fallacy (of the questionable cause variety) that
states, "Since that event followed this one, that event must have
been caused by this one." It is often shortened to simply post hoc
and is also sometimes referred to as false cause, coincidental
correlation, or correlation not causation. It is subtly different from the
fallacy cum hoc ergo propter hoc, in which the chronological ordering
of a correlation is insignificant.

Post hoc is a particularly tempting error because temporal sequence
appears to be integral to causality. The fallacy lies in coming to a
conclusion based solely on the order of events, rather than taking
into account other factors that might rule out the connection.

Now to get to the info that the OP requested:
I would go ahead and make a small ntfs partition for my XP system of say 12 GB, then a small ntfs partition for my Windows progs of oh, 20 GB. Next do a little one for puppy sfs and home files maybe 10 GB (probably ext3,) small swap partition of 512 MB, then the rest of the 76-78 GB as a Fat32 partition to share data on between Puppy and XP. Install your XP 1st , then do puppy using lin n win frugal method which works just fine for me. BTW my experience with XP has suggested to me that to operate XP optimally you should run at least 1 GB of memory, I don,t know why but my systems have seemed to work smoother and faster and with less corruption when I am running that much memory. Just sumthing for you to chew on a bit.

I was needing some defrag-tool for Win (something that really work, not the in-built thingy) and somebody point me this one: http://www.piriform.com/defraggler. There is a portable version free which does the job fine.
Bruce B, you should use pa's Superscriptorium the next time. It rocks ._________________

As bigpup has already intimated the problem may have been due to the installation method. As we don't know what method was used or how XP failed in the boot process it is hard to offer any further suggestions.

I could make Windows fail to boot if I messed the boot.ini update when following Lin'N'Win. However, that does not mean Puppy is unsuitable for installing on ntfs - just that I don't take enough care in following instructions!

BruceB has pretty much summed up the current situation with regard to ntfs and Puppy. He is also right that the OP looks as if they have a blank disk and may be perfectly happy to create Linux partitions. That's fine with me. I just wanted to provide an alternate view on the comment that Puppy installed on ntfs upsets Windows booting.

There is always a risk - Microsoft may make a change to the ntfs system in service pack, which may cause a problem. However there is enough evidence in the field now to suggest we are OK on the ntfs with XP with any of its three service packs or the initial issue of Windows 7.

Now to get to the info that the OP requested:
I would go ahead and make a small ntfs partition for my XP system of say 12 GB, then a small ntfs partition for my Windows progs of oh, 20 GB. Next do a little one for puppy sfs and home files maybe 10 GB (probably ext3,) small swap partition of 512 MB, then the rest of the 76-78 GB as a Fat32 partition to share data on between Puppy and XP.

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